Author: thependulumswings staff

Ten Piece Nuggies for FSU.

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

There are nuggies (remember them in high school?) and there are nuggets.  Florida State University’s football team got a nuggie from the NCAA Playoff Committee Sunday.  Ten nuggets follow pointing out the hypocrisy of it all.

  1.  The committee proved that the phrase “winning isn’t everything” is correct.  FSU, a Power Five conference champion beat everyone they played.  They are 13-0.  Bama and Texas have one loss each.  FSU is on the outside looking in.
  2.  Did the committee prove that the phrase “follow the money” is also correct?   One current Big 10 team and one soon to join it joined one current SEC team and one soon to join.  What’s the commonality?  TV money.
  3. While the ACC is stuck in its media rights deal with ESPN until 2036, the Big Ten and SEC will have new TV contracts beginning in 2023 and 2024, where each school in the respective conferences will earn $67 and $51 million per year.   Each ACC school is only making $23.3 million.  Marketing experts call it brand building.   CEOs call it ROI.
  4. The most outrageous part of it all is the subjectivity.  The committee decided that FSU going forward without its start starting QB wasn’t as good enough as the team was with him.  Funny, though, they kept FSU in the top four every week after the injury until this past Sunday.  What changed?
  5.  Meanwhile, Georgia was ranked number one every week for the past six or so.  But then they lost to Alabama.  So were they number one when they were ranked by the esteemed committee as number one?  The answer, not the beauty of this, lies in the eyes of the beholder.
  6. Now Georgia is sixth.  They lost one game only to now  #4 Bama.  Was it because their schedule otherwise was weak?  If so, how were they number one over Washington before the loss to begin with?
  7.  The beauty of a team sport is that some faction of a very successful team will always pick up another piece.  When Jordan Travis went down has the FSU defense stepped up?  It has.  Holding high-powered Louisville to six points with it supposedly all on the line was impressive.
  8. But there is no way FSU could beat Michigan without Travis, correct?  That’s just like there’s no way #8 Bama could beat #1 Georgia, correct?
  9. Can you imagine Roger Goodell stepping up to a podium announcing the NFL playoff team contests and leaving Philadelphia out because Jalen Hurts got hurt?
  10. Next year the playoffs expand to 12 in total.  This ensures that the committee will get about 9 right.  That’s seventy-five percent, the same as 3 out of 4.  That’s how many they got right this year.

In case you don’t remember.

What does it mean to give someone a nuggie?
It’s a light blow or jab, usually to a person’s head, back, or upper arm and accompanied by a twisting motion, with the extended knuckle of the curled-up second or third finger: done as a gesture of affection or painfully as a prank.

Beep Beep

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Happy birthday to our nation’s leader, President (in name only?) Joe Biden.   Old Joe from Scranton is 81 today.  He’s done the people’s business for a long time.

He’s also told us that he’s taught college classes, was arrested for advocating on behalf of Black people, conducted an Amtrak train, and driven an 18-wheeler.

Heck, he even said he played football at the University of Delaware.  Was he considered for the Heisman Trophy?  Probably not.  That would have raised some hubbub.

And speaking of the Heisman Trophy and hubbub, this year’s race to the Downtown Athletic Club is as hotly contested as next year’s presidential election will likely be.

Despite Oregon quarterback Bo Nix playing lights out on Saturday, there’s a new player in his rearview mirror when it comes to winning the Heisman Trophy.

LSU QB Jayden Daniels (nicknamed JD5) made a nice move up the oddsboard Saturday night, passing up Washington QB Michael Penix Jr.  Daniels is now the new co-favorite with Nix to win college football’s most prestigious award.

Most of the wanna-be’s have fallen well off of the pace.  Thankfully, after Marvin Harrison Jr’s Saturday three-catch 30-yard performance his run seems halted.  The media tried awfully hard to pimp a really good wide receiver with pretty good stats and thought his name would help the narrative.

Harrison could go nuts in The Game, aka Michigan hosting his Ohio State squad this weekend and try to jump back in the conversation.  It’s doubtful.

Penix will get one more game than Nix and Daniels to showcase his talent in the PAC 12 Championship on 12/2.  Votes are due back on 12/4.

Nix transferred two years ago from the SEC to the PAC 12 Oregon team.  Daniels transferred two years ago from the PAC 12 to the SEC LSU team.

If statistics are the final factor, Daniels has a big advantage over Nix.  Daniels’s rushing yards added to his passing yards making his total combined yards well ahead of Nix and against a tougher schedule.   If the West Coast narrative is the final factor, Nix is playing in a beleaguered league in its last year before the PAC12, which really has 14 teams, becomes the PAC 2.

Oregon has lost once.  LSU has lost three times.  Why does that matter if you’re giving it to the best individual player?

JD5 is smoother than freshly woven Italian silk.  He runs like the cartoon character Road Runner.  He makes the chasing defense look like Wile E Coyote.  No one catches him.  Beep Beep, or is it meep meep?

His touchdown to interception ratio is a spectacular 9:1 with 36 TDs to 4 picks in 303 throws.

Old, mostly white, and mostly crotchety men of the press corp, about 850 in all, vote from coast to coast.

May the best man win fair and square like Joe Biden mostly did in November of 2020.

For this writer, it better be JD5 to avoid another J6.

Just kidding.  Sort of.

 

No Debate

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Remember the good old days when you went back to school and your second-grade teacher had you write about what you learned on your family vacation?   Didn’t you at least once want to write a single word, “Nothing,” and turn it in?

Remember the good old days when presidential debates actually meant something?  If you watched last night’s Republican Debate didn’t you at least once think this was a whole lot about “nothing,” and turn it off?

Of course, they have more substance than the Democrat’s debates, for there aren’t any.  Although there seems to be considerable debate within the party of Joe Biden’s mental and physical health to run the country for four more years.

There’s actually a debate in some circles about whether he’s running the country now.  But, we digress.

Five fine folks took the stage last evening named DeSantis, Haley, Ramaswamy, Christie, and Scott.  They all trail former President Trump in the polls by roughly 40 gazillion percentage points.

There is no debate in the Trump camp about his need to debate.  He was actually campaigning outside of Miami.

Also absent last evening was his former VP, Mike Pence.  He said last week that “now wasn’t his time.”  The polling to get on the stage wholeheartedly agreed with him.  If not now Mike, when?  A strong guess would be never.

As the crowd dwindles, former NJ Governor Chris Christie now occupies the far left podium and position.  Sometimes his detractors wonder if he is “far left” with his incessant attacks on Trump.

He won’t make the next cut down and will soon vanish like Pence.  At least he can fall back on his day job as a NY bus driver.  Wait, we are being told that is actually Ralph Kramden, not Kris Kreme Christie.

Tim Scott will drop like a dead tree in a forest.  If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, is it sound?

Vivek Ramaswamy was interesting for five minutes.  But, that was five weeks ago.  He talks too fast.  He’s like a petulant child that won’t go quietly into the night.

That’ll leave two, DeSantis and Haley.   Can all of the “never-Trumpers” and supporters of the last one standing actually give Trump a run for his money?  Never say never.

Well, we’re assuming Trump has money left after paying for 20 lawyers in the four states that are trying to convict him of what most still aren’t sure.

Vegas must have Haley as the shortest odds to be the next VP.  Would she want to stand next to The Donald?  She’d obliterate Harris in a VP debate.

Eventually, there will be one standing, and there’ll be one or two debates against the Democratic nominee.  That assumes that Fauci’s lab bats don’t escape and COVID-24 keeps us all indoors wearing masks.

If that were to occur we could watch Biden campaign in front of parked cars, horns blowing in unison agreeing with everything the octogenarian mumbles and stumbles through.

That assumes he actually runs.

America is in good hands.  Maybe.

We just don’t know whose hands.  Definitely.

The next 365 days will be interesting, of that there is no debate.  Absolutely.

 

 

 

 

Ten Percent of Ten Percent

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

The House took three weeks off to make up their minds about a new Speaker.  BBR took three weeks off to give the staff some much-needed rest as well.

Wednesday the new Speaker Mike Johnson and at least 25 of his House Republican Representatives sat down for a town hall with Republican blowhard cheerleader Sean Hannity.

Sean asked them in a show of hands who would vote for, based on their knowledge to date on the influence peddling of Hunter and the Biden family, impeaching President Biden.  The show of hands looked unanimous in favor of doing so.

Yesterday a copy of a 40k check made out to Joe Biden was shown again and again on fair and balanced Fox.  The 2017 transfer from first brother James Biden and his wife Sara to the future president allegedly involves the same business deal in which Joe Biden was called the “big guy” and penciled in for a 10% cut.  It could be and maybe will be the first proven instance of the commander-in-chief getting a piece of his family’s foreign income.

All of that while more than just Rome is burning around the globe and here at home.  Would impeaching old Joe be a good idea in the political theatre while men and women are dying in theatres of war?

Maybe it would assuage those from the right still seething from one or more of the Trump “witch hunt impeachments.”  But does it move the needle in 2024?

Well, it would if the House actually voted to impeach then sent it to the Senate and the Senate held an Impeachment Trial and found Prez Biden guilty of hiding some fraudulently acquired funds.

The Senate has a slim Democratic majority.  In today’s polarized political climate, there is no way any Dems would break ranks and vote to abandon Joe is there?

That’s likely very accurate.  An in-the-know Republican friend of BBR doubts that any Dems would break.

It’s very accurate unless you are one of those who believe that the Dems don’t really want an 81-year-old Biden to run again.  After all, he seems challenged to walk much less run.

It’s actually the trap door they may be looking for if only one or two decided to make it so.

“Farfetched that is,” you naysayers say.

Pay off Kamala with a 15 million dollar book deal.  She could write about Venn Diagrams.  And voila!

Before your eyes appears a Newsom/Buttigieg ticket.

What are the odds in Vegas right now that we could have a second Second Gentleman in a row?

If you were Biden would you take 10% of the “10% for the big guy” and get some action now?

Or, is this another all-talk and no-action Republican-led House with a new leader making all of the above a nonstarter?

 

 

An Eye for an Eye

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Did it all start with God creating Adam and Eve?  Or, did humans naturally evolve over the course of millions of years?  Do you believe in a superior being or do you believe in the Big Bang Theory?

Regardless of your beliefs, do you believe that the beginning of mankind was(somehow) a singular event? You would be hard-pressed to explain it otherwise.

Therefore, weren’t the first and by extension aren’t all humans created equal?  The authors of this nation’s Declaration of Independence thought so.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

There it is. It’s the preamble to the declaration.  By definition, it is the very basis for what follows.

Abraham Lincoln called it “a rebuke and a stumbling block to tyranny and oppression.”

If you’re on board so far, this leads to a fundamental question.  Who on this earth has any right whatsoever to take the life of another?

Isn’t the answer absolutely no one?  No.  It isn’t.  But, it’s close.

The right to defend yourself, your family, your home, or your country when there is a very real threat to your existence is justified.

Some say this is where it gets a bit grey.  Maybe it is an ever so tiny, tiny, bit grey.  But that is painting with a tiny, tiny brush.  The broad strokes are very clear.

al Qaeda flew planes into the Twin Towers, and the Pentagon, and wanted to hit the White House.  There is ISIS.  The Taliban.  Hamas was formed in 1987 and has been murdering ever since.  Terrorist groups all.

There are(were) many other groups, unfortunately as well.

Nazis.  Mafia.  KKK.  Street gangs.  Drug Cartels.

There are individuals.

Serial Killers.  Vigilanties.  Domestic abusers.  Armed robbers.  Rapists.  Road Ragers.  Jilted lovers.

Ending another’s life without justifiable provocation has gone on since life began.  The human mind can be a very dark and weak space.  You would think that mentally pulling the trigger would be far tougher than physically doing so.  You would hope.

There is a very fine line between civility and incivility.

But, you have no right to take another’s most basic right.  That’s the right to live.

If you believe in an eye for an eye, the punishment for crossing the line should be swift and severe.

If you don’t what is the solution?

We’ve been searching for it since the beginning of mankind.

 

The Next Act

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

The first bad actor in the latest play on the world stage was Russia.

Their yearlong and counting Act One has been expensive to watch (120 billion or so and counting as well).  You don’t even get to see it anymore, you just hear about it.

Enter Hamas(spelled I.r.a.n.).  Their brutal sneak attack on Israel reset the low bar.  Act Two now, and rightfully so, has Israelis participating by air and by land.

Is China far behind?  Aren’t they looking for an entry point?  There are others(North Korea notable among them), but mostly they have smaller roles.

The world theater seems conducive to more heinous misbehavior.   Is there a perceived weakness abroad about us at home?  Maybe.

But, while we watch from across one pond and maybe soon two ponds, should we be looking elsewhere?

Elsewhere as in-home and specifically to the south.

It was noisy and deadly with radicalized jihad-type folks after 9/11/01 till around 2015 in the United States.  Then it became quite quiet.

But with millions pouring in unabated from dozens of foreign lands through Mexico into the US, should we feel safe here at home?

Fear-mongering you say?  Maybe drop the mongering part as it’s just fear from learned experience.  Those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it someone once or twice has said.

Dozens of books chronicled our multiple government agencies’ inability to work together to connect the warning dots that enabled 9/11.

What’s changed?  What’s changed is nothing and plenty.

Does it feel like we are more cohesive today than we were back then?  Do we know what we don’t know?

The Department of Defense is ready. Or not.

“The planet’s changing climate has a significant effect on Defense Department missions, plans, and installations. DOD is elevating climate change as a national security priority, integrating climate considerations into policies, strategies, and partner engagements.”  That’s straight from their website.

The Department of Homeland Security is ready, too.

“Addressing the climate emergency is a priority for DHS as sea-level rise, extreme weather events, workforce health, and other direct and indirect impacts of climate change will affect the Nation’s preparedness and national security over the long term.”  Yep, that’s straight from their website.

Maybe we can bomb the next “weather bomb cyclone” before it strikes the mainland.  But can we unearth cells that may have taken root right in our own backyard?  Did they walk right in and sit right down?

When you pull back the curtains how can you like what you see on the big screen?

The US is watching.

And, now the world is acting.

 

 

 

If

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

If.

If you want to see who should win the Darwin Award for long-term strategic planning, look south to the Texas Border.  Last evening United States Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas cited the “immediate need” to waive regulations and build a border wall in Texas as immigration surges.  What a forward-thinking planner he and the Biden administration is.

If they were able to count all of the illegal aliens that have entered since Biden and his two biting dogs entered the White House, they might think they’ve brought in enough to turn the voting in Texas from red to at least purple in coming elections.  That wasn’t part of the open border policy, was it?

If you have one dog in the White House that bites everybody that’s one thing.  Replace it.  If you have two, what does that say about you?

If liberal Chicago is miffed about the illegals getting preferential treatment over their own, you best take a look at the polls.

If Texas knew all it took was New York Mayor Eric Adams to fly down there 18 months after Kamala Harris was named Border Czar, they’d have paid for a first-class ticket long ago.

If Rodney Dangerfield were alive today he would take one look at Congress and heartily exclaim, “No respect, no respect at all!”

If the reason why Lauren Boebert voted to retain McCarthy is that he bought her off with 40k from his PAC to help her 2024 reelection she should get primaried.  It’s the first step to RINOism, and from that there is no turning back.

If Donald Trump were to become the next Speaker of the House, the world would be officially whacko.  Can you see it though?  It would be must-watch TV.  He has a few legal hurdles in front of him and a presidential campaign to run though.

If Steve Scalise or Jim Jordan were to ascend to the Speakership in the next week or so life would go on as if McCarthy’s ouster never happened.  What?  Think back to the 16 or so votes it took to put McCarthy in.  It seems like the hysterically trumped-up turmoil wasn’t that tumultuous after all was it?

If the word “chaos” is used just once more to describe the House, it’ll be an even 1000 times.  It’s not chaos.  It is change.  And, considering what took place, it was fairly orderly.

If you held a tech conference for women and a bunch of men showed up claiming to be non-binary is that a bad thing? The Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) welcomes all genders but reported a massive inundation of men who took opportunities from them on the weekend.   An organizer said some unwelcome guests falsely claimed to be “non-binary” to make it in.  How would he/she know if he/she was lying?  What/who determines that?

If you held a tech conference for women only, is that inclusive? Diverse?

If there was one thing the organizer could do it would be to apologize.  “In the past, it has always felt safe and loving and embracing. And this year I must admit I didn’t feel this way,” AnitaB.org Advisory President Young Lee said. Many of you are feeling unsafe physically and psychologically. I want you to know that we’re taking this so personally.”   Unsafe?  This isn’t a Walgreens at dark in downtown San Fran getting looted by a flash mob.

If we could only turn back time.

Real Change Has a Price

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

As former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy packs up his office belongings to move down the hall this AM, there is a lot to unpack about how and why he was sent on his not-so-merry way.

First and foremost, remember that it took the Republicans 17 different votes to give him the gavel to begin with. You can call that a lot of things, but “mandate” isn’t one of them.

McCarthy agreed to a single vote “motion to vacate” to ascend to the Speakership to begin with.  He got the carrot, but the handful of votes that came with it still carried the stick.  Yesterday they used it.

Why?  This is where it gets complicated.  The simple answer is that enough Republicans felt like he was acting like a uniparty swamp RINO even though he swore to be otherwise.

You can call them MAGA Republicans, ultra-conservatives, malcontents, or even ass@#%*$ as one of our more fervent readers did late last evening.

But, can you blame those further to the right if they truly believe what they are doing for the country is the right thing?

The Democrats agreed.   They voted unanimously to oust McCarthy.  Well, of course, they did.  This morning the words disarray, chaotic, and worse are hurled at the Republicans.  It’s always a great day to knock down a rook on the political chessboard.

They always vote unanimously.  But, they have their factions too.  Bernie is a socialist.  The Squad is, well, The Squad.  Sheila Jackson Lee and Maxine Waters are tubas in the wind section of the band Nancy and The Blowhards.

But, is always voting unanimously good for the country?  Or, is it always good for your party?  Or, is it always good for your political career?  Ah, yes.  Now we’re getting somewhere.  If you want that DNC or RNC money and support to help your reelection campaign, vote accordingly.

It wasn’t always this way.  A great example is back in 1991 when the full Senate voted 52–48 to confirm now Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.  In all, Thomas won with the support of 41 Republicans and 11 Democrats, while 46 Democrats and 2 Republicans voted to reject his nomination.

That’s when independent thinking was still in style, allowed, and even preferred.

Do you know that Matt Gaetz, the unflappable smug leader of the malcontents takes zero dollars in PAC money and less from lobbyists?  He sounds like an outsider that insiders would prefer stay outside of the Capitol.

You like sausage, but you want to pass on seeing how it’s made.  Yesterday, the meat grinder setting was on high.

If you want real change in DC you’re really up against it.  Ask Trump.

“We have no Speaker!” Egads!

One could argue that we have no minority leader in the Senate either.  Mitch McConnell, you say?  Please.

And, one could argue that we have no President.  Joe Biden, you say?  Ahem.

The House is in recess for a week.  We’ll get to another speaker.  And, the process might be as cantankerous as this last one was.

Sometimes real change is really hard.

 

 

 

 

The Pretend Fight

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

In 2018 Joe Biden announced he was running for president. When asked why, he emphatically said, “It’s a battle for our nation’s soul.” In other words, “embrace our vision.”

Last week, Nancy Pelosi announced that she was running for reelection as the representative from Cali District 11.  She said she has to as “we are in a fight for our democracy.”  She may have been the accelerant for J6, and she’ll use it to her advantage as long as her 83-year-old soul lives.

Always give the Dems credit.  They craft a catchy “cause” phrase, define it in their own self-interests, tell the media to run with it, and sell it way better than their friends from the other side of the aisle.

We assume our nation’s soul and our democracy would include open and fair elections.

Is the Democratic Party open to a fair process this go around? Does their democracy in the “fight for our democracy” include the opportunity for all voices to be heard, or just voices that see the nation’s soul the way they do?

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. wonders as well.  He hinted strongly last Friday that he would run for president on a third-party ticket instead of continuing his long-shot primary challenge to President Biden.  The DNC shut down the “democratic” election process months and months ago.

Free speech sometimes has a hard time finding its way onto an expensive stage.

No debate, no opposition.  It’s Biden 2024. Or, bust.

Or, is it?

Maybe RFK sees the country’s soul and democracy fight differently than the establishment does.  RFK’s move set off alarms among Democrats worried about its potential to cause chaos in November 2024.

The establishment has “established” folks like Biden and Pelosi.  They’ve been “doing the people’s work” in DC since 1972 and 1987 respectively.  If you’re counting, that’s 87 years of combined fine service.

Lieutenants Harris and Buttigieg fell directly in line when asked four years ago.  For that, they got high-profile jobs that they were immensely not qualified for.

What do we do with this RFK guy?   He seems like a rogue one that has little interest in being bought and paid for.  Worse yet, he thinks on his own.

Ah, how about we have Gavin Newsom at the ready, yet only emerging from the shadows enough to show his pearly whites now and again? He’s bought all in.

In the fight for our democracy, we need a promotable lieutenant in case our president were to take a nasty fall ascending a staircase or exiting a stage.

Or worse, he could pull a Dianne Feinstein.  She was well established too and a spry 90.

Too soon?

 

 

 

 

Have a Nice Trip

Posted on by thependulumswings staff

Yesterday President Joe Biden took an early fall trip.  Walking down the short stairs of Air Force One to visit the Michigan United Auto Workers Union picket line he almost took a fall himself.

Perhaps Karine Jean Claude Pepe Le Phew Pierre will characterize it as a misstep.

The twenty gas-guzzling SUVs convoyed off of the tarmac.

Jo-Slip Biden didn’t miss a step while joining the rally as he supported the UAW in their new contract asking for a 40% wage increase over four years and a 32-hour work week.  Every Michigan vote will count at least once next fall.

As a scrappy kid from Scranton (not Baltimore as he said late last week), he can relate to hard times.  He works about 32 hours a week himself these days.  And, a 10% pocket liner is right in line for the Big Guy.

Of course, the UAW better be building all-electric cars soon cause otherwise 40% of nothing is nothing.

It’s an assembly line of economics, or Bidenomics if you prefer.  You need big wage increases on the job these days to keep up with inflation at the grocery store and the pump.

But, big wage increases cause inflation.  And inflation causes the Fed to raise interest rates way faster than Biden can ascend a staircase.  And higher interest rates supposedly cause the economy to slow and mortgage rates to go through your new home’s roof.

Most of all higher long-term rates accelerate the nation’s debt.  You know the debt.  It’s a national disgrace that we don’t talk about.

Well, Joe does.  He’s told us that since he took office he’s cut it by 1 million, er, 1 billion, um 100 billion, er, 1.75 trillion dollars depending on the day he misspeaks.

On Monday the debt crossed over 33 trillion dollars.  It’ll balloon to nearly 36 trillion by the end of 2024.

Never mind all that, Joe spent 14 minutes with the hard hats in the key swing state and then headed west like the young man that he is.  Fire up the plane, and spew some fossil fuel emissions over the flyover states.  The next stop was a big Democratic Party fundraiser in California with the movers and shakers out there.

On the way out the Michigan dignitaries told Biden to ” have a good trip.”

He said, ‘I’ll see you next fall.”